Research conducted by comScore has shown that women spend 30 percent more time on social networking sites than men.

The study, titled “Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet”, found that 75.8 percent women users visit social networking sites compared to 69.7 percent of men. Women were also found to spend a lot more time on social networking sites compared with men with an average of 5.5 hours compared with men’s 4.

The study also looked at web usage trends and the data showed that women spend 20 percent more time on retail sites and significant more time on health sites than men. However men spend more time watching online video even though women spend more time on YoutTube.

Although women appear to be leading the way in terms of social it appears men are leading the way for mobile web usage. The research found that Smartphone usage is dominated by males with a 60/40 split.
What is interesting about these findings is that the trends appear to be the same across 4 different global regions which included Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia Pacific.

Stats like this are useful for understanding your target audience. As Linda Boland Abraham, comScore chief marketing officer and executive vice president for global development says, “Understanding gender-specific differences in Web usage is valuable to any digital stakeholder looking to successfully reach and engage both women and men in the online environment. We have seen that women across the globe share some similar usage patterns online, such as strong engagement with social networking sites, but it’s also important to understand gender differences on a regional, country and local level, where cultural differences are continually shaping online usage and content consumption.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Industry News, Social Media, Statistics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.